Golden Knights Add Stastny

The Golden Knights were able to lure one of the league's biggest fish in the free agency pond their way, as they signed centre Paul Stastny to a 3-year, $19.5 million deal. Stastny was supposed to be in the mix for a return to the Winnipeg Jets, but it looks like some cap constraints kept that deal from being done, so off he went to the Western Conference champs, signing on for the next few years.

Stastny split time between St. Louis and Winnipeg last season, getting dealt at the trade deadline to boost the Jets' chances at playoff success, but they ended up falling short to the Golden Knights in the Conference Finals.  In the regular season, Stastny played in all 82 games, scoring 16 goals and 53 points, ranking him 86th among all forwards in scoring.

The addition of Stastny gives the Golden Knights some much-needed depth down the middle and at 32 years old, he brings just enough experience and veteran leadership to this team, without sacrificing too much in the age department.

Forwards	Cap	Defense	Cap	Goalies	Cap
Paul Stastny	6.500	Brayden McNabb	2.500	Marc-Andre Fleury	5.750
Tomas Tatar	5.300	Nate Schmidt	2.225	Malcolm Subban	0.650
David Clarkson	5.250	Nick Holden	2.200
Jonathan Marchessault	5.000	Deryk Engelland	1.500
Reilly Smith	5.000	Jon Merrill	1.375
Cody Eakin	3.850	Griffin Reinhart	0.800
Ryan Reaves	2.775	Brad Hunt	0.650
Erik Haula	2.750
Oscar Lindberg	1.700
Pierre-Edouard Bellemare	1.450
Alex Tuch	0.925
Cody Glass	0.894
Tomas Hyka	0.650
Ryan Carpenter	0.650

It's a slightly different looking Golden Knights team, in the early part of the off-season and it's hard to say whether or not it's for the better just yet.  Some key names are off their roster list and they've only made a couple of additions to their side, so far.  The Golden Knights still have plenty of room left underneath the salary cap, $19.2 million or so, which suggests that they could be far from done in this off-season.